Art criticism is now Pathological Therapeutics. One critic seemed to feel
(though rather vaguely) this fact, for in the course of his pulsating article he
caught sight of one very valuable pathological point in the Szymanowski songs—
viz., the lack of proper mating of melody and accompaniment, and openly
accused Mme. Poldowski of a kind of sadistic abuse of her technique. Mme.
Poldowski’s affliction has been patiently explained by Dr. Freud. For the point
on the Szymanowski songs, see “Musicritico-Therapeutics” by Dr. Diovo, in
which he points out a certain complex in the psychosis, creating a tendency to
destroy the infallible law of nature that all products and species are, and give
the definite impression of being exactly alike, inseparable, and indistinguishable.
The singer and the accompanist, erudite and informed to the last degree in
the new Art-activities, sang and played the songs of Szymanowski without emotions
or feelings (these are passe) but with the utmost sympathy and conviction. I,
as the pianist, will try to point out what I feel the composer was trying to do or
did, in creating these songs. Mr. Szymanowski’s place in the universe of music,
first of all, is juxta-spiatric. These songs hang in the great splado-cospathomane,
the plexor-rhythm of the universal dynamo. This great truth is part of the new
mathematical circum-psychose, seen and understood only by the spherical mind.
And how admirably he, the composer, has expressed this great metempiric
condition of the metaphysical separation of the two meta-coitic contents, thus
expressing the catasmic truth that two things operating together are not separate.
Nature is done for, humanity is done for, facts are done for, traditions are done
for, we are coming into the fourth dimensional existence; Mr. Szymanowski is
there, and his audience and appreciators must be there. Music as Music is done
for, humans as humans are done for, Critics as Critics are done for; we must
now have the flights into “Otherness of the There” as Susan Glaspell says
with luminous humanity; we must have a great intense preoccupation with the
“nearly” if we would soar with spiritual wings to the Brooklyn bridge of the
U ni verse.
Mr. Szymanowski’s is a transcendental spiritual triumph, the psychic
evolution (prefix “r” if you have those inclinations), the psycho-peristalsic
progress of a great new mental experience!
ALLAN TANNER
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